1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for the printing of pre-constructed clothing articles, and clothing articles so printed.
2. Description of the Related Art
The customization of pre-constructed clothing articles is relatively common. Because of the advent of centralized manufacture, the vast majority of individuals now wear clothing which is mass produced to standardized sizes in standardized patterns as opposed to being individually constructed for their person. While many will seek out tailoring, which is designed to improve the fit or wear of such pre-constructed clothing articles, many other people are interested in customizing pre-constructed clothing to provide for a unique appearance. This customization may be to provide for a look unique to the individual, or to provide for a relatively small number of identical pieces of clothing, such as for a club, team, school, business or other group of people interested in wearing matching clothing to show an allegiance, a participation in a particular event or activity, or to provide a quick indicator of association. The customization is usually done because the individual wants to express a relatively unique style specific to the individual or group. For example, a person may be interested in having their family, or pet, pictured on an article of clothing, but would be uninterested in having someone else's family or pet.
Customization generally involves the transfer of a two-dimensional image, selected by the person customizing the clothing, from an image that is not on clothing to the clothing. The person wishing to obtain the piece will therefore generally carry out two steps. The individual will select a two-dimensional image that they wish to have printed on the article of clothing and the pre-constructed article of clothing (both style and size) that they wish it printed on. While there are certain images prepared for use on clothing and many custom printing techniques are also used for mass production, customization is intended, herein, to mean transfer of an image which has either been custom created by the individual for use on the clothing, or is an image taken from elsewhere which the user wishes to have transferred to the clothing after the clothing article is constructed.
While custom clothing can be constructed by the customization of raw cloth or construction techniques, the customization of pre-constructed clothing presumes that the clothing article has already been manufactured and is ready to wear prior to being printed. The appearance is therefore altered after construction to provide for the customization.
The vast majority of customization occurs on shirts and specifically on T-shirts. The T-shirt, because of its large front and rear panels and easy visibility when worn provides for an excellent surface on which to print an image. Further, we have become used to seeing T-shirts with writing and other images which are designed to attract attention and proclaim the user's desired statement.
One common method for customization is embroidery. This method, while producing rugged and generally attractive clothing, is quite labor intensive and limited in reproducing actual images. These type of systems are instead limited to being generally solid color designs defined by available threads. While a wide variety of colors can be used, the human eye is often accepted as being able to distinguish more than 15 million different colors. As embroidery systems utilizing such monstrous numbers of colors would be impossibly complex, the patterns are generally limited by the colors of thread or other fabric available. Further, each thread sewn is generally of relatively large size, and therefore it is often difficult to create other resultant colors through dithering and related techniques. Therefore, embroidered designs often have a distinct unnatural look. The advent of high speed computer controlled embroidery machines has made the embroidery process capable of reproducing more complex designs, but embroidery still requires significant time for a custom print and is generally limited to small more stylized images (such as those on pockets or smaller articles such as hats). Further, embroidery generally makes the resultant article relatively stiff and much thicker in consistency further limiting its ability to be used on large areas and on clothing which needs to flex when worn.
The advent of screen printing or silk screening technology allowed for alternatives for placement of custom images on clothing. Screen printing effectively uses a stencil to allow a pattern of ink to print onto an underlying surface, such as a piece of clothing. Such methods usually use inks that provide for a hard-edged image. Since the screen or stencil, with modern manufacturing processes, can be made very detailed, it is also possible to print relatively full color using Cyan-Magenta-Yellow ink combinations for virtually any image that could be provided.
Screen printing, while a major improvement in imaging on pre-constructed clothing, still has problems. Because of the nature of a silk screen application, each screen could only be used to apply a single color of printing in a single pattern therefore requiring full color designs to use at least three screens, and possible additional ones to produce specialized colors such as metallics or white. Further, because the article had to be printed multiple times, registration problems (where one color moves slightly relative to others) could ruin the resultant article. Further, screen printing inks generally render the underlying fabric stiff because they print on the surface of the fabric. This also allows them to wear off over time. For these reasons, while the cost of a single color screen printed design may be quite reasonable, a multiple color design was often prohibitively expensive without being combined in a large order and even then screen printing is generally unable to produce true full color designs.
Newer technologies, such as dye sublimation and ink jet printing of clothing have provided vast improvements in the ability to provide for multiple colors and the reproduction of more complicated images without loss of as much detail in reproduction. These technologies can allow for complex, many color images, such as high detail photographs to be reproduced at reasonable cost.
While the technology for printing higher quality images has gone up, one facet of clothing article printing that has remained in the same is the area of the clothing article that is printed. Because of the nature of printing techniques, in order to print a surface of a clothing article, the surface generally must be flattened because all the techniques will print on the two-dimensional surface presented to the transfer technology. In order to make sure the surface is flat, the selected images are purposefully made smaller than the individual component of the clothing unto which they are to be printed so that the area to be printed can be completely and easily smoothed out rendering a clean print. Effectively, prior methods have therefore only printed on a single component of an article of clothing at any time, as each component comprises a relatively thin piece of fabric lending itself well to two-dimensional image transfer. For example, printing on the front of a T-shirt means printing only on the front panel of the torso. Further, because images are often printed on a number of different clothing articles of different size and design without the image changing, the image is almost universally centered on that component. In that way, differences between clothing articles need not be taken into account during the printing process and the image can be printed on different sized articles. However, this can result in a relatively small customization space and an article of clothing which often looks distinctly “homemade” because the image retains qualities of its pre-clothing appearance. For example, the printing of a photograph prints the photo in its standard rectangular shape, clearly showing it is simply a photograph printed on a shirt.